


When Love Prevails

by Lendra



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Headcanon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 14:27:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17265836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lendra/pseuds/Lendra
Summary: My Headcanon about how the last five minutes of Voltron Season 8 should have gone if everything we'd learned remained true to the very end.





	When Love Prevails

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for checking this out! It's not exactly 'story' format, though I tried to arrange it that way. It's a pretty rough outline of how I'd love to have seen the ending go and although I would have changed PLENTY of other things throughout the season, I decided to tackle the ending first since it was pretty universally hated.
> 
> If you like it, please comment! I'm proud of this idea, but I'm a bit nervous. Voltron is a huge fandom with a lot of ideas floating around so I'd love to hear what you all think.
> 
> Again, please be kind! It's very haphazardly thrown together and not mean to be much of a literary piece.

It’s the moment of Allura’s sacrifice. Allura makes to say her goodbyes, there’s a finality to it, this kind of feeling like ‘this can’t be happening’. She goes to Hunk first, goes to pull him into an embrace and he steps back, abrupt. His expression is firm.

“No.” He says.

“...What?” Allura. 

“I said no. This isn’t happening. I won’t - I won’t let it happen.” Allura’s face goes soft and sorrowful. “Hunk. I know this is difficult, but-“

“It’s not difficult. We’re not letting you do this alone. It’s pretty simple, actually.” Allura turns, agape, at Keith’s words

“Keith?” Allura is taken aback. Shiro steps in. 

“We started our journey as strangers. We’ll end it as family; together.” Allura shakes her head, her composure beginning to slip. “Shiro, you can’t - I can’t just-“ 

“Yes, you can. _We_ can. And we will.” He’s firm. Desperate, she looks to Pidge. 

“Pidge- please, your family. You couldn’t...!” Pidge’s gaze is downcast. She appears to be reflective and distressed.

“I finally found my family...after everything.” Allura grips to it.

“Yes - please, _please_ don’t abandon them - not for me-“ 

“You misunderstand, princess. I’m not abandoning them.” Pidge lifts her head. Her eyes are wet. Allura feels herself cracking. Her strength of resolve is wavering. She doesn’t want to go. She doesn’t want to lose them. But she can’t - she can’t be selfish - she musn’t. She whips her gaze to Lance, searching wildly, desperately for a last resort. Lance, after a beat, shakes his head softly. “I said I couldn’t live without you...”

“No...” Allura pleads

“I don’t want to try to-”

“Lance, _please_ -“ 

“Not while I can make a difference.”

He pitches forward, gathers her up, and all at once, like a wave, she begins to weep. Hunk envelops her next, then Pidge, then Keith, then Shiro. She weeps, for the pain of their sacrifice, but most of all, for a joy she never allowed herself to revel in. A family, so perfect, to make this journey with her, to its final steps.

They’re all in tears, holding each other tightly, all together, bracing for the end without regret, and the light, blinding and beautiful, envelops them all.  


It cuts to first person perspective - inside a paladin helmet.  
  
It looks like spinning through a whir of words and images, voices swirling and overlapping, like far off cries or whispers directly in the ear- hundreds of worlds and lives, a vortex of it and then, an explosive blast of light; consciousness comes in spurts. Coran’s voice echoes in faded swells. The sound of gunfire and energy fields in disarray. It’s just disorienting flashes of blackness and muted spaces of silence until, all at once it’s nothing. There’s a moment of it.

Then, in concentrated form, a voice familiar and urgent, not friendly but oddly purposeful says “wake up” and Lance is rocketing upright, gasping for breath like he’d been drowning.

The paladins are around him, all varying expressions of panic and confusion, as if they’d only just been awoken themselves and they weren’t quite sure what had happened. They’re in their paladin armor, on the surface of some small planet that was stationed just outside the rift they’d entered.

  
The team, gathering their bearings, are trying to make sense of what just happened. Much is the same, yet much is different. There was a hush about them that was unsettling  
  
Atlas and other evidence of what transpired are missing but the area seems freshly bothered. “What happened? What were those voices?” Hunk’s the first to ask the big question and from there, they reflect on their experience and exactly how they’d ended up where they did.

  
“Where are the lions?  Where’s Atlas? Where...where’s Allura?” Keith asks this, but no one seems to know. After a brief bout of more questions, attempting technological pursuits to no avail, Pidge observes something on Lance’s cheeks. He removes his helmet, and as he does, the Altean markings are there. With it, something dreadful settles.

  
As if on cue, before anyone can come to any daunting conclusion, Coran’s voice crackles over their communicators. Atlas soon appears, and as it turns out, they’d been missing for two weeks. It’s not terribly long, but the urgency of their battle and their absence of a fortnight was far more unnerving than the three years they’d been mia. It was a different kind of battle this time; one with a distinct limit that made an hour feel life long.

  
They board Atlas, all fuzzy headed and feeling displaced and worried. Where was Allura? What happened to Voltron? Did they succeed?  
  
Did they fail?  
  
Coran doesn’t have the answers, and when he asks of Allura’s whereabouts, it’s with masked desperation. Their questions remain unanswered, save for one.

 

Blue is the only lion that remains, and when they approach, she’s unresponsive.

 

She had come from the rift after a burst that had rocked loose the Atlas crew and all surrounding life, floating adrift and empty. The paladins were not with her, and none of the other lions were found. Pidge runs schematics and diagnostics, and Slav confirms, as compassionately as he’s able, that the lions are gone, and with them, the threat of reality collapse.

It’s not difficult to deduce that the lions had put themselves in place of their paladins, and from that, they survived. But Blue’s presence and Allura’s absence remained a mystery. Why? What had happened?

  
It’s like that for months.

They return to earth, the victory of realities restored at their backs and they feel empty. They try to understand. They try to come to terms. But it’s just not fair. Yet there’s only so much that can be done.

  
They rebuild.

  
Blue sits as a statue, a testament as they work and Lance, sometimes, will look at her and think he hears something, feels something. But nothing ever happens. Time continues on. It’s a couple months shy of a year and Keith has taken to staring at Blue at times as well, and Lance appreciates the solidarity. Keith understands the sting of loss, after all, but neither of them fully admit what draws them to her. Maybe it’s something hopeless.

‘ _Wake up_ ’

  
Lance darts upright in bed one night. His heart is racing. That voice again- but this time he knows- he knows who it is. His face is warm. The marks are glowing.  
Like a calling, Lance is running to Blue and, as though tethered by heartstrings, the paladins are not far behind him. She’s awake; a living beast and she’s gazing at Lance, expectant. It feels painfully nostalgic. The lot of them, they’d felt it; that pull, that odd connection, and like the first step of their journey, Blue bends to allow them aboard and they follow her lead.

  
Just as they did when they were garrison students, a dropout, and a lieutenant, they let Blue lead them; all singing with tension and not quite ready to risk speaking aloud what may be happening. Blue takes off with the team in her cockpit and in the middle of the night, they go.  
  
The journey is not long, and although it looks different than before, the sky splits into the familiar circular vortex that peels open space time just for them; a wormhole. None of them dare to say anything. But their hands are locked together; gripping tightly to one another.

  
When they finally emerge, they are presented with a planet, and they are left speechless and disbelieving.

  
“That’s...” Hunk starts.

  
“...Altea.” Lance breathes.

  
Blue presses on, and when they land, it’s in a breathtakingly gorgeous field that looks ethereal in the touch of dawn. They all step out, feeling wonderstruck and all hoping for something they’re too afraid to put a voice to. But Lance can feel it. Like he’s pulled to it. He walks forward, toward this magnetic current and there is something on the horizon. He moves faster, and the paladins begin to trail him because they see it, too.

  
The sun is just letting gold bleed into the sky when Allura lifts herself from a bed of flowers and looks on and out, as if waking from sleep, and she turns to face Lance just as he is piling into her and wrapping her up like a dream that could fall away at any moment. Pidge, Hunk, Keith and Shiro arrive and heavily resist worming their way into an embrace that is currently charged with something different. Lance is shaking.

  
But when he pulls back, they pile in and Allura, just as surprised as the lot of them, is trying her best to keep composure. It’s been almost a year and in ways, it shows. She cups Lance’s face, thumbs his markings.

  
Pidge, wiping tears, asks with almost no expectation of an answer, “How... how did you make it back?”

Allura shakes her head, still trying to make sense of it all and she goes to explain, but pauses as something catches her eye behind them. They all turn to look, and witness as Blue slowly begins to fade. It’s bittersweet and they’re still not sure exactly what is happening, but they watch through to the end, as Blue becomes a whisper of light  and then is no more.

They’re quiet, whimsical, and Hunk breaks the silence; swiping the heel of his palm against his eyes, wet. “So it _was_ the lions...”

But it couldn’t be just that. It had taken so long for Allura to return. “But why couldn’t Blue do anything until now...? Was it the entity...? Was it preventing the alchemic exchange of energy?” Pidge, as usual, tries to theorize. Keith, however, looks contemplative, and he shares a look with Shiro before he looks at Lance. Lance is gingerly touching the markings on his face.

“It wasn’t just the lions... was it, Allura.” Lance looks to her, and her expression is almost sad, but not quite.

“When I was... wherever it was; the heart of the universe, it was like a vastness of nothing, and everything. I didn’t know what was happening, what I was, or what to do. Then, I heard a voice..”

  
Lance remembers. The one telling him to wake, more than once. He had heard it and thought it not possible; but he’d been through enough impossibilities to know otherwise now. “...Lotor.”

  
The paladins quiet and Allura, after a beat, nods. “...yes.”

  
“He...helped you?” Hunk sounds disbelieving, but not cruelly so.

  
“I think he helped all of us.” Keith speaks up, and Shiro drops a hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “It’s...hard to explain, it’s all just... feelings. But I think it was him who helped navigate us out of that void.” When Keith looks to Allura, she has her eyes closed in quiet reflection.

  
“My memories are scrambled and hazy, but... I remember his voice. Telling me to go. That there would be a tether to the world; one that would guide me home...” she opens her eyes and looks, with sad and incredible fondness upon Lance, and cups his face once more. “And he was right.”

She thumbs his markings again, a gift Lotor had given; the tether.

Lance takes her hand and holds it against his face with a desperate kind of affection; his eyes closing. Allura, after the gentle exchange, continues. “He told me to lead. Lead them the way he could not... and that he was sorry...” she looks upon the paladins. “...and hello...” her face is pinched, lashes beaded with tears, but she’s smiling. “...and goodbye.”

There’s something that moves through them. Keith steps forward after a moment and looks with such softness at the woman he thought they may never see again; alive, and well.

“Then lead, Allura. Live, and lead them. Lead us. All of us.”

She looks almost bashful, but happy; oh, so happy. “I will. I... may need some help, however.”

It spans them, indicative of their agreement, and together, they aim to build the world anew.

**Credits start to roll**

Partway, it cuts to the Paladins again

“So…” Hunk begins, “Anyone know how we’re going to get home…?” The group goes silent.

 **Credits continue rolling**.  

Cuts to them again, Pidge has figured something out but it’s VERY crude and thrown together in what looks like a several day process and panic. They wait with bated breath, bedraggled with purple crescents under their eyes, and suddenly, there’s a signal. They celebrate obnoxiously.

**More Credits**

Cuts back to them once more - the Atlas arrives on Altea and Coran is the first expelled from it. He looks frantic, caught between scolding the paladins and never wanting to let them go for that disappearing act. He then sees Allura.

They look upon one another; Allura with sweet, familial fondness and Coran with disbelief. He pitches forward and they embrace. He’s crying uncontrollably and she, with tears in her eyes, consoles him.  
It shows all of them together, the paladins, then their families, the MFE pilots, everyone; all happily reunited.

**Full credits roll**

 

**\--EPILOGUE--**

 

The epilogue opens to Altea with newly built structures and what looks like several different ambassador ships. It zeroes in on what looks like the centerpiece building of the city.

  
A little child is running down a hall and you hear in what is distinctly Lance’s voice saying “Tor! Tora, come on!” It’s light hearted, and the little girl, just able to run and giggling is scooped up. Next to Lance, who had snatched the laughing girl, she is clearly his kin. He doesn’t look much older, though it’s evident he’s grown. He is adorning what looks like casual Altean accouterments and a royal circlet. He’s scolding her, but she’s too adorable and giggling too much to care. He doesn’t care much either.

“Where’s your twin brother, anyway? Lolo?” He calls, but at once, said little boy is barreling into Lance’s legs and urgently tugging at him.  
Lance follows, amused and curious; being led by his index finger in his son’s full finger grip. It’s to a vast span of windows and Lo points with wide eyes up at the sky. Lance, expecting nothing revolutionary, looks to the sky and balks.

It cuts to Allura who is heading a meeting with Coran beside her; several species of alien surround their table. She mentions earth, and how it acts as a central hub for interspecies communication and exchange. It will be their primary spearhead for their mission, and the Holts are their coordinators. Lance bursts in, startling the room and Allura turns around; her stomach just a bit swollen with another child on the way. Lance is all gibberish and Allura does well to calm him enough to get it out that something is careening their way; something the sensors didn’t pick up.

  
There’s an impact, rocking them on their feet, and once it settles, they’re all scrambling to see.

Whatever it is, luckily, has missed any residential areas and only did a number on some barren cliff face. We don’t see what it is, but Allura is sending out an immediate contact.

We see Pidge, tinkering with some advanced olkari tech with her brother, mother and father in the background; lifting her goggles upon a message from Altea and excitedly proclaiming it to Matt. They gather to see it, their eyes go wide.

We see Hunk, helping engineer the MFE cruisers and taking a brief moment to share lunch he’d made with the pilots. Shay arrives, as she’s helping integrate bulmera crystals into the ship with Hunk’s ability in mechanics. She has the message. He takes it and reads it, the MFE pilots all nosily peering in behind him. The pilots riot. Hunk nearly chokes.

We then see Keith and Shiro among the blades, going over some schematics of areas still needing liberation; Keith is adorning a marmoran suit and Shiro in his Atlas battle suit. His hand is loosely around Keith’s waist as they organize a plan. Krolia and Kolivan are present along with Zethrid, and Ezor is popping in, looking amused. Keith and Shiro exchange looks before she shares with them Allura’s message.

“Get the Atlas moving; we’re headed to Altea.” Shiro says  


They all gather at the crash site and they’re all staring with something like wonder. In the center of the impact is a comet identical to the one that crashed on Daibazal; the very same that built Voltron all those years ago.

Pidge breaks silence. “With this... voltron could he rebuilt…”

  
Hunk cuts in. “But... that’s an eerie repeat of history…” The truth quiets them all. Coran speaks next. “That’s true. It could be an omen to a similar fate that befell the Galra and by extension, the universe…”

  
Shiro, instead, approaches it differently. “However..” Keith, ever attuned to Shiro’s thoughts, finishes, “This could be where history doesn’t repeat itself. With Voltron, we could lead the universe to peace- actual peace…”

  
The paladins all look at one another, Lance exchanging looks with them all before he turns to his wife. “Allura? What do you think…?” She is the lion goddess; perhaps her lifeforce, connected to the lions, called them home.

  
Allura broods, silent a moment. Lotor’s voice is quiet; a memory _‘Lead them. The way I could not.’_ She then turns to all of them and is smiling, brightly.

The screen cuts black; a lion roars.  



End file.
